


One Sister Have I In Our House

by verygibbous



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-27
Updated: 2012-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:48:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verygibbous/pseuds/verygibbous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Don’t you listen to them,” she said to Lily. “What do they know?”</i> </p><p>Esme and Lily Weatherwax, time and again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Sister Have I In Our House

**Author's Note:**

> Written last summer for disc_fest. Tweaked for a few minor details, ever so slightly cleaned up, and only posted now because I'm a butt.
> 
> Original prompt: “Granny Weatherwax meets an old friend (take this as you will).”

 

 

ESMERELDA WEATHERWAX.  
  
Despite not having been asleep, the feeling Granny gets is one of waking from a deep slumber. The considerably darker shadows of the cottage fade away gently into the starlit expanse of a black desert.  
  
“I’m dead,” she says.  
  
YES, says Death.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
There were two small girls in the tickly bracken, nearly lost to sight under the large, curling leaves of fern. They were in a part of the forest that overlooked their village which was a little patch of brown and white among the wild greenness and jagged gray rock of the surrounding land.  
  
One girl was leaning forward from the trees to peer down at the sight with the air of a queen surveying her kingdom. Her long, very pale blond hair was a brief gleam of warm color in the forest’s chill.  
  
“It would serve them right,” she said, “if we never went back.”  
  
Her voice was full of enough bitter resentment to curdle milk, but there was an underlying note of tears that she couldn’t entirely squash down. Four handkerchiefs and two uncomfortably damp sleeves later, the hurt still resonated faintly through her fury like the ringing of wind chimes in a gale.  
  
“They may not want us to,” said the other girl. She was sitting in the cradle of tree roots with nothing more to mark her presence than her voice and the suggestion of gold hair in the shadows of the long leaves. The rest of her seemed to blend into the background.  
  
“You saw the looks on their faces, Lily,” she said.  
  
Lily smiled grimly, a strange mixture of pride and offense.  
  
“Oh, yes. They got ever so cross, didn’t they, Esme?”  
  
Her sister laughed. “We may as well have killed someone, the way they were lookin’ at us.”  
  
“That’s ‘cos they’re boring,” said Lily. “Their idea of excitement is that man who puts badgers in his shirt.”  
  
“Let them have it then,” said Esme, gesturing vaguely to indicate the country below. “All the _boring_. I don’t want it.”  
  
Lily settled down by her, drawing her knees up to her chest. They sat in amiable silence for a while before she spoke again, her voice unusually hesitant.  
  
“I thought it would help,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t even big magic. Just. More glittery than usual.”  
  
Esme didn’t answer for a long time. But she looked at her sister all curled in on herself with eyes red from crying, and then thought of the people down below. She always made a point to be clear about her boundaries. They weren’t there to put a limit on what she could do, but to mark a line in the sand between what was inside with her and what was not.  
  
“Don’t you listen to them,” she said to Lily. “What do they know?”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Granny surveys the endless stretch of dark sand before speaking again.  
  
“And now, I’ve to cross the desert.”  
  
YES. BUT NOT YET.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The Weatherwaxes had always been highly attuned to magic. It was in the blood.  
  
Lily took to it not so much like a fish to water but more like a match would to a fireworks factory. She couldn’t play with the other children or do her chores without adding a bit of magical sparkle to it. Since people didn’t take well to this, she ended up not doing much of either.  
  
Between Lily and everyone else, Esme always preferred the company of the former. It was the way of personalities: when someone had one so like yours, you either got along like a house on fire or despised them. And in their little village in the Ramtops, there weren’t many people Esme got along with anyway, not that she often cared to try. Lily was enough for her and vice versa.  
  
It was near winter now, and the chill was set bone-deep into everything. The wind nipped at bare faces and the cold dug into the joints of even young people, who then got very old looks from villagers much richer in years whenever they complained of it. Once colorful leaves curled up brown and crunched underfoot. The dirt was mostly hard and frozen and made rooting around for vegetables a devil of a task to tend to. Any rain tended to freeze before it could soften it into mud.  
  
The girls were in their mother’s garden digging out grubby potatoes, carrots, onions, beetroots, swede, and turnips from the soil. They plucked sprouts, beans, and a few scraggly remnants of a once noble army of snow peas into a large basket. The herbs were done for, but the squash had cropped up nicely.  
  
“Esme, look at this.”  
  
Elbow-deep in dirt and cold potatoes, Esme merely grunted.  
  
“No, Es _me_ ,” said Lily from somewhere to her left, “you’ve got to _look_.”  
  
Esme made an I’m-not-very-pleased-because-I’ve-been-rooting-at-onions-all-day sort of sound (she had many variations, even now) and straightened, leaning back on her heels. She dusted dirt from her hands, but didn’t bother wiping the cold sweat from her brow because the dirt actually went all up her arms.  
“What is it?”  
  
“Watch!”  
  
Lily pulled something small from her apron pocket and dropped it in a hole on the edge of the vegetable patch. In a single flowing movement she crowded the loose dirt back into it and placed her slender hand on the tiny mound. She gave Esme a quick, secretive smile and turned her eyes back to her work.  
  
There wasn’t anyth—  
  
—was a feeling. It was a slight, strange wobble in the air, like the heat over a road in summer, and something that wasn’t exactly a musical crash but the feeling of having heard one. Like a tiny rumbling fading in the ears. For a moment, the world seemed brighter, greener, and warmer. It was dizzying. The not-quite-winter-yet cold seemed to melt away worryingly fast from Esme’s skin.  
  
Then there was a sound like rustling paper and the moment went. It was like being jarred awake from a soft dream by a million books being rustled all at once, gentle in nature but not-gentle in its magnitude.  
  
Something green curled up from between Lily’s fingers in the dirt, twisting upwards towards the scant sunshine. It climbed up and up, unfurling yellow in the light.  
  
“I worked on it for a week,” said Lily proudly.  
  
Esme stared up at the sunflower in amazement. She tilted her head all the way back, eyes wide. The honey-yellow blooms looked like five burning suns against the gray sky. It was wonderful.  
  
She turned to grin widely at Lily before all sense returned to her. She scrambled forward and grabbed her sister’s hands, which were as cold as ice.  
  
“Isn’t it good?” Lily went on, apparently unaware, “I got the idea seeing old Gran Butterwart melt the ice off her steps.”  
  
“You’re _freezing_ ,” said Esme, trying to rub the life back into her hands, “What were you thinking? Honestly, that’s—”  
  
“Oh, don’t say ‘dangerous’, you’ll sound just like Mum—”  
  
“I was going to say ‘stupid’,” said Esme acidly. “Did you even know what you were _doin_ ’?”  
  
“ _Magic_. You may as well ask me if I know I’m breathing air.”  
  
Esme was now attempting to slap the warmth back into Lily’s hands. “I’d reckon you weren’t breathing enough, your brain must’ve been functioning on next to nothing, that was so dumb—”  
  
“Stop it.” Lily tugged her hands away, frowning. “Just stop fussing for once. Can’t you just, I dunno, stop and smell the roses? I did such a good job too.”  
  
“They’re not roses.”  
  
“Still.”  
  
“You could’ve—you can’t just mess about like that. Anything could happen!”  
  
“Nothing did, though,” said Lily. After a glare from Esme, she hastily added, “Not much.”  
  
“Right, ‘cos frostbite’ll make ‘not much’ of you when your arms fall off.”  
  
“Ha ha, you’re so witty.” Lily fidgeted a bit before she said, “Sorry. But you’ve got to admit, it’s pretty good.”  
  
Esme didn’t say anything, just sort of grumbled in a vaguely agreeable way, but it was enough to make Lily brighten again.  
  
“Go inside,” said Esme, rising and trying vainly to brush the dirt from her dress. “I’ll get some water so’s we can have a wash—and I’m going first—and you can make the tea. It’ll warm your hands up. This is probably enough potatoes for the whole winter.”  
  
Lily went without argument, trying to huff on her hands without Esme seeing. She noticed anyway.  
  
Esme lingered briefly beneath the sunflower’s wide green leaves before grabbing a bucket and heading for the well. For a small moment, the air hinted at warmer days, before it too passed like snowmelt.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“What do you mean, ‘ _not yet_ ’? I happen to be dead, you know.”  
  
YES. I KNOW. NEVERTHELESS, says Death, PLEASE STEP THIS WAY. YOU ARE NOT QUITE DONE WITH IT YET.  
  
“With what?” says Granny, squinting up suspiciously at two glowing eye sockets. “Don’t you dare mess me about, you, not after all these years.”  
  
WITH...THINGS, says Death vaguely, waving a skeletal hand at nothing. I AM AFRAID I DO NOT ENTIRELY UNDERSTAND IT MYSELF. YOU KNOW HOW IT IS THESE DAYS, ALL THESE PEOPLE MUCKING ABOUT WITH DIMENSIONAL THIS AND QUANTUM THAT.  
  
“Do try,” says Granny with what would’ve been sweetness, except that, in actuality, it was not. Not even remotely.  
  
I HAVE HEARD IT DESCRIBED AS...WIBBLY-WOBBLY.  
  
“Rubbish. I’m not having with any of that _vocabulary_.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
There had been another row. Lily had stormed out of the house nearly crackling with the force of her unsuppressed rage, and Esme had followed. Her sister’s dramatically slammed door had scarcely time to touch the frame before she’d yanked it open again and strode after her. Their parents’ voices hadn’t carried far; even heartbroken and angry, they had never been the sort to make a fuss.  
  
“Lily!”  
  
She didn’t stop or turn around, so Esme had to run up and catch her by the arm. Lily twisted out of her grip and backed away.  
  
“Don’t you dare,” she bit out, glaring. “Not _you_.”  
  
“And why not?” Esme snapped. “I heard what you said to Mum and Dad, I know what you did to those girls and old Nanny—”  
  
“Oh, _please_ , I hardly did anything to them! Is it my fault that they’re all so painfully _dull_ that they can’t even handle the sight of a teeny little magic trick?”  
  
“The way I heard it, you just got into a tiff with Nanny Stomper and threw a tantrum like a _little girl_ —”  
  
“Shut up!”  
  
“—and then you just waved your hands and—”  
  
“Shut _up_!”  
  
“No,” said Esme, “you listen to me, Lily Weatherwax. A ‘magic trick’? She was scared to death! What is this, Lily? What are you doing? Because bugger if I know, but it ain’t witching and if that’s what you think it is, you’re the sorriest excuse for one I ever saw!”  
  
“Are you really defending them? Over me?”  
  
Esme stared at her sister, stunned. “Of course I am. I have to. We have to. It’s what you do.”  
  
“Isn’t that typical? Oh, Esme, when did you get so predictable?” Lily rolled her eyes and brushed her long hair back. There were silvery little trinkets braided through it and she was dressed in something flowing and elaborate that should’ve looked ridiculous, but Lily had always had some kind of sparkle about her that made the absurd splendid.  
  
“That old bat couldn’t teach me a damn thing, and took offense when I just told her the truth,” Lily went on. “And those girls got exactly what they deserved. If they don’t respect me, why should I bother with them?”  
  
“And you think this is the way to get respect, is it?” asked Esme coldly.  
  
“I thought you of all people would understand! How can you stand it, all these empty, boring people with their stupid little problems?—and witching isn’t much better either. Oh yes, all this work to have some influence over the village idiots! Magic is supposed to be _magic_ , not a bunch of trickery and—and _babysitting_ and cleanin’ up and settling down!” Lily was shouting again, her wrists glittering with silver as she gestured angrily at the air. “How can you stand it?” she said again. “How can you, when everything is so _small_?”  
  
Esme looked at her sister, whose eyes were the same blue as her own. They didn’t seem strange or unfamiliar. She thought she recognized the look there. She had seen it in the mirror on bad days, when the little world around her fell short of the one in her head.  
  
“And what will you do, if you’re too good for us?” said Esme, “What comes after, Lily? What’ll it be after scarin’ old women half to death and terrifyin’ poor girls? Because from where I’m standin’, it looks like nothing but the worst.”  
  
“What do you mean ‘us’?” asked Lily, bewildered and furious, “You’re not like them, you’ll never be like them, you’re better—I thought you understood, I thought you—”  
  
“And I was under the impression that you were thinking at all!” Esme shouted. “I guess we’re both wrong! I can’t believe you, how could you be so _stupid_ , how—”  
  
There was hardly any warning, just Lily screaming and taking a step forward—  
  
Esme didn’t see where the fire started, but suddenly there was heat, and orange and yellow flames too bright to look at surging towards her—she raised her arms in front of her, eyes squeezed shut—  
  
There was nothing but a gentle hiss of steam, soft as a kiss.  
  
Esme lowered her arms and opened her eyes.  
  
The ground was scorched in long shadowy lines, the surrounding trees charred black, and gray ash fluttered delicately down like snow. There wasn’t a fire anymore. There wasn’t even any heat.  
  
Over the burnt ground and burnt trees and crumbling burnt remnants of bushes and grass there was a fine, pale layer of frost. Some of it was already melting away, but everything still looked like it was covered in glass and icing sugar. Steam coiled thickly into the air.  
  
Esme looked at her hands, hardly daring to breathe. Frost melted from her warm skin and trickled down her wrists. Her fingers tingled.  
  
She heard a sharp intake of air some way beyond her and looked up at Lily, who was a stark, bright streak of color against the black and white trees. For a few seconds, neither of them moved or spoke, but then Lily came towards her on legs that shook so terribly. Esme was careful not to flinch away.  
  
“I didn’t—I’m sorry—”  
  
Esme closed her eyes, feeling hands that were far, far too cold rest on her arms.  
  
“Lily,” she said, exhausted, “Lily, come home.”  
  
They went.  
  
It wasn’t fine. But it worked, for a while.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“So where are we going?”  
  
YOU SEEM TO BE TAKING THIS IN STRIDE.  
  
“I’ve seen a lot of things,” mutters Granny. “Ain’t much left that can bother me.”  
  
  
  
  
  
“Hello.”  
  
Esme looked up from the mess of string, egg, and miscellaneous junk that was supposed to be her shamble. She scowled. She was sitting in Nanny Gripes’s garden, trying to keep the worst of the egg off her dress, and a girl was peering at her over the wooden fence. Her pointy hat had gotten in the way of the light.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Practicin’ shambles, are you?” said the girl, who was short and plump with long brown curls. She leaned her elbows on the fence and looked down curiously.  
  
“Yes,” said Esme curtly, returning to her work with a good deal more bustle than it required.  
  
“You must be new,” the girl went on cheerfully, drooping over the fence like a limp noodle. “Just started with Nanny Gripes?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Before she knew it, the girl had clambered over the fence and plopped down beside her. Esme stared, dumbfounded, temporarily forgetting about the raw egg oozing through her shamble.  
  
“Me and a couple of girls do a meetin’ up every now and then,” she said, beaming. “You should come!”  
  
Esme didn’t bother to answer and returned to the task of de-egging her dress. She sighed and tossed the ruined mess of string and muck onto the dirt.  
  
“Shambles can be really troublesome, can’t they?” said the girl, staring peacefully up at the blue sky. She didn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that she was holding a one-sided conversation.  
  
Esme mumbled something vaguely human-sounding and looped some more string around her fingers.  
  
An egg appeared before her, as if by magic. And it was magic, sort of. A bit. Well, the hand holding it was definitely attached to a witch, which was pretty magical as magic went, even if she was just a junior witch in training.  
  
“Here,” said the girl, “I always carry spares, just in case.”  
  
Esme blinked and carefully accepted the egg. She glanced sidelong at the girl as she bent over the shamble.  
  
“Esme Weatherwax,” she said eventually.  
  
“Gytha Ogg,” said Gytha Ogg, grinning hugely. “Nice to meet you.”  
  
At some point, she produced another egg from down the front of her dress (“I keeps the first one in my hat”) and joined her in shamble-making. The whole process seemed much more pleasant with two people commiserating over the mess.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
She was going to be the best witch there ever was. Esme worked and worked at it, all the dirty work, all the messy jobs, all the dark moments hiding like knives in the wool of mediocrity. It was backbreaking and thankless. Sometimes the satisfaction of knowing that she was good at witching was enough. Sometimes it wasn’t and all the nagging old witches and screaming children and dull, needy people and the smallness of the world got to her, and she would start thinking that her sister had been right about that at least. Most days she gave herself a mental slap and snapped out of it. On bad days, she brooded.  
  
On one such day, she had gone looking for a woman all in red, framed by the shadows of the Dancers. Listened to her talk of power and respect and real magic. But she had seen the truth of her eyes, too hungry, and thought fleetingly of how Lily used to speak the same way of magic. In the end, she had not needed it or really wanted it. There was no satisfaction in being the best through means that weren’t her own, and Esme was prideful; if she was to be the best, people would know—and know it _well_ —that she owed her success to no one but herself.  
  
So, she had turned around.  
  
A ways away, there was the tall, silly boy, standing on a bridge and throwing pebbles into the water. Esme would work all her life—she knew this. A moment for herself, maybe two, was the least she was due, she figured. So their time was better spent. A summer of running wild and meeting by moonlight.  
  
There was another. Her mother frail and dying in bed, cocooned in white sheets, asking for her dead husband and lost eldest daughter. With those two gone, she had never been quite the same, and the illness was a just a further blow to her. Esme had taken the utmost care in tending to her. After all, she had seen it coming for miles off. She knew what to expect, so she made sure her mother went peacefully.  
  
Later, after the funeral, when her eyes weren’t so red anymore, she wound up her mother’s old clock. The _tick tick tick_ started, and she moved on.  
  
And there’d be a day, years and years later. There would be a chance glimpse in a mirror, and following it, the broken glass of history strewn across the decades. Things never ended right between her and Lily.  
  
She never wished for a different life, and certainly not an easier one. She knew hers was hard, and that there was no way around it anymore, not this late in the game. There were always things to do, so she went and did them. You did the job in front of you.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
But it wasn’t all bad.  
  
“Cooee! Esme!”  
  
“Oh, shut the door, Gytha. You’re lettin’ the cold in.”  
  
“Hello Granny. Look, Esme, it’s Granny, go say hello.”  
  
“’loo G‘nee.”  
  
“Yes, yes, fine. Magrat, I’m fair parched, go—”  
  
“—make the tea. I know, Granny. Oh, Nanny, don’t let Esme get at the ginger biscuits—”  
  
“Morning, Granny!”  
  
“Morning, Agnes, Perdita. Do shut the door, won’t you? And You, get off that!”  
  
“Sorry?”  
  
“Not you, _You_ —”  
  
“What’ve I done?”  
  
“Not you, Gytha—”  
  
“Tea’s up!”  
  
Not at all, really, all things considered.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“What is this?”  
  
AH, says Death, I THINK THE CORRECT TERM FOR IT IS 'WATER'.  
  
“Don’t you go bein’ cheeky at me, mister, not at my time of life.”  
  
BUT, IN FACT, YOU DO NOT POSSESS ANY MORE LIFE.  
  
“Don’t mean I got to put up with all that.”  
  
It is water, though. They had trekked across a considerable part of the desert and had come across a beach.  
  
The water is eerily still and silent, as dark and smooth as smoked glass, with nary a ripple to disturb it. It looks to be as big as a lake, a sea, maybe more. There seems to be no end to it.  
  
Granny’s boots sink a bit in the wet sand. There are no waves. There is no tide. It's absolutely calm. Even in the shallows, she can see a perfect reflection of herself peering back at her.  
  
There is a soft metallic sound and a brief shine of light on the surface of the water.  
  
HERE, says Death, handing Granny a sword edged in electric blue, YOU WILL NEED THIS FOR YOUR QUEST.  
  
“My what.” It’s technically a question. It just doesn’t sound like one because Granny knows exactly what she’s just heard and doesn’t like it one bit.  
  
“What are you playin’ at?” she says, glaring, “I can’t be havin’ with quests. I’m _dead_.”  
  
IDEAL TIME, IN MY EXPERIENCE, supplies Death helpfully.  
  
“Do I look like some daft young bugger in a horned helmet out to save his equally daft lady-love from the underworld? I’m dead.”  
  
SO YOU KEEP SAYING. REPETITION DOES NOT ACTUALLY MAKE IT A GET-OUT-OF-ADVENTURE-FREE COUPON.  
  
“I thought you were against this sort of thing,” says Granny, gripping the sword. It’s quite heavy, but bugger all if she’ll let that show.  
  
I AM AGAINST MANY THINGS, BUT THEY CONTINUE TO EXIST, NEVERTHELESS, says Death, LIKE THAT BOXY CAT THING PEOPLE INSIST ON DOING. AND I HARDLY THINK I COULD KEEP YOU FROM DOING ANYTHING, MISTRESS WEATHERWAX.  
  
“Damn right,” says Granny smugly. She is dead, after all. She’s probably allowed some smugness.  
  
ANYWAY, YOU KNOW HOW THE STORY GOES.  
  
Death pulls out a black-and-black striped roll from the inside of his robe and unfurls in ominously. It’s a towel. He spreads it out on the sand and settles down on it.  
  
I'LL BE RIGHT HERE WHEN YOU FINISH.  
  
Granny opens her mouth to say, “I’m dead, I’m already finished, what is this buggeration” but it seems redundant. Once again, she looks upon the glassy water and her reflection: the lined face, the white hair, the eyes like chips out of the midsummer sky. She considers the sword in her hand.  
  
A hero in the land of death, standing before a river of lost souls.  
  
The glittering black sand swirls up lazily in the water as Granny drags a boot forward. She takes a breath and drops into the dark.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
She falls so deeply, deeper than a hundred years of sleep. At some point the water becomes the air and it all becomes a dream. She wakes to a land of brightness and a million other Esmerelda Weatherwaxes. The sword in her hand scrapes noisily on the glass floor beneath as she stands.  
  
The mirrors stretch endlessly far and away.  
  
It’s not the place that surprises her, but the fact that she’s here again.  
  
She strides through the corridors, the sword hefted easily onto her shoulder. The memories of her body’s aches, pains, and limitations were hard to shake, but she’s succeeded in the end.  
  
When she passes by, the Esmerelda Weatherwaxes behind her don’t exactly seem quite the same. There is always a movement on the edge of sight, perhaps in the reflection of a reflection of a reflection. It could be smiling. There could be teeth.  
  
She thinks she sees one, later, thinks for one wild second that it’s come out of the mirrors just like Lily’s had—but it’s not. The shock of it is even worse.  
  
“Esme?” says Lily Weatherwax.  
  
She is pale and thin and still dressed all in white from that prince’s ball years and years ago. Little has changed.  
  
Esme moves forward and grasps her sister’s hands like she had _meant_ to that first time, when she had broken that first mirror. She doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing, only nods.  
  
She hefts the sword up from where it slid to on the ground and brings it crashing into the mirror to her right, then the one on the left. The glass tinkles down from the broken mirror in the ceiling. Esme thinks she sees something of strange hands and too many eyes in it before it cracks.  
  
“Lily,” she says, finally. “Lily, come here.”  
  
Her sister stands beside her as she smashes the sword into the last mirror below them. The glass shatters, the hairline cracks spreading like vines throughout all the mirrors. There’s nothing but blackness below and they plunge through without a sound.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
They surface in the water spluttering and gasping because breathing is a hard habit to kick, even when you’re dead. Eventually, they drag themselves onto the shore, dripping wet and freezing.  
  
Death is still lying on the beach, only now he’s reading a very small but very thick book.  
  
“Here’s your bloody sword!” gasps Esme, throwing the thing down in the sand and collapsing onto the towel.  
  
THANK YOU, says Death. He turns a page.  
  
Lily is sucking in great, noisy lungfuls of air, still standing upright but looking about ready to collapse. The silvery black sand clings to the sodden fabric of her dress. She gives up and falls over.  
  
Eventually both sisters regain enough imagined energy to get upright again, Esme pulling Lily out of the sand, the both of them falling into a habit so natural that even years of animosity couldn’t beat it entirely out of existence. Then they stand by each other, unsure of what to say first.  
  
“Am I dead?” says Lily.  
  
YES, says Death.  
  
“Oh.” She turns to Esme. “Are you dead too?”  
  
“I am.”  
  
“Then…” Lily pauses to wring more water from her hair. “Are you coming with me?”  
  
In the little time that Esme had to build up expectations for this particular situation, she never once considered this. She had thought there would be more arguments, vows of dramatic if futile revenge, maybe a half-hearted apology even. Not from her, obviously. At least some cutting remarks. She stares at Lily who is still managing a certain amount of austere dignity even in a dripping wet ball gown.  
  
“You’ll have to do it yourself,” she says, though not unkindly. Even after a lifetime of cleaning up after her sister, it isn’t the resentment that lingers on but the instinct that tells her she still has to. She ignores the memories of both anyway.  
  
For a fleeting second, Lily appears lost and much younger. Both of them seem at a loss for what to say, deprived of any further feelings of bitterness which usually fueled their conversation. Most of them had either been washed away by time or had been shouted out on the tower of Lily’s fairytale castle.  
  
“It should have gone differently,” says Lily with a shade of her old firmness.  
  
Esme shrugs. “Well, it didn’t. We just did what we thought we ought to.”  
  
“I never adhered to ‘ought’. It was always ‘want’ with me.” Lily glances over her shoulder, as if hearing something in the distance.  
  
“Yes. Well,” says Esme grumpily, “I suppose you’d better get going.”  
  
Lily nods and hesitates before taking Esme’s hand. They’re both still freezing from the water, but there’s a familiar waver in the air, and when she lets go, they’re warm. She turns and is gone.  
  
WHAT WILL YOU DO NOW? asks Death beside Esme. The beach towel, book, and sword have disappeared.  
  
“Not sure,” she says. For a dead person, she feels awfully old. “Maybe I’ll just stop here for a while.”  
  
I'M SURE YOU'LL THINK OF SOMETHING, says Death.  
  
And then Esme is alone.  
  
She waits for a little while on the shore. It’s not long before another figure joins her, smelling of pipe smoke and mostly apples.  
  
“How long have you been here?” says Gytha Ogg.  
  
“Doesn’t matter,” says Esme. She brushes back her wet, blond-as-cornsilk hair. “Long enough.”  
  
And they go.

 

 


End file.
